We just celebrated the last birthday of 2012. We're all a year older and a year happier too. :) 

Just in case my children should want to remember a tiny bit about their birthdays in the year 2012…hopefully this will do the trick.

Somebody had a Lucky 7 birthday filled with rainbows.

Somebody got the shaft on their birthday because I was so sick. At least he got a cake. (And he wins the prize for crazy eyes!)

Somebody's cake fell over. But he didn't seem to care at all.

Somebody had raspberries and cupcakes. She was extremely happy about this.

Somebody woke up to a red-themed birthday. Since that's his favorite color and all. Overheard as he discovered it…"This. is. AWESOME!"

Somebody has joined the ranks of double digits. A very happy boy indeed.

And with that, we'll patiently (or maybe not so patiently) wait for the next year to surprise us.

You probably didn't know that it was International Harry Potter Day a few days ago, right? That's okay. Me either. Until I saw an Instagram post from my sister-in-law, Rhonna. I casually mentioned to Dallin while we were waiting for the bus on Wednesday that it was Harry Potter day. His eyes lit up. Of course they did! This boy LOVES Harry Potter. He can always be found carrying a book, sneaking in a little reading time wherever he goes. He's already halfway through the series for the second time. Surely he can't be my boy.  But I love his passion for it.

He asked me if we were going to do anything to celebrate. Ummmm, maybe. I hesitated. But as the day went on that maybe became a no. That night before he went to bed, he begged that we could do a little something the next day. I kissed him good night and assured him I'd do something.

After perusing some lovely ideas here, I went to my stash to see what I could figure out at 9:00pm. I didn't have any of the right stuff but with some creativity, I improvised. I dug up some old Halloween candy eyeballs, printed out a menu and slapped some potion labels on mason jars.

When he came downstairs the next morning, his eyes were as big as Christmas. Ah, mission accomplished.

The broomsticks were super easy to make. I grabbed some jute, gathered it together, and glued it to a wooden dowel following Heather's tutorial.

A little side note, this photo at breakfast was not staged at all. What did I tell you? He carries a Harry Potter book with him everywhere! The menu included PolyJuice Potion: smoothies, Golden Snitch cakes: mini pancakes, and Jelly slugs: scrambled eggs.

They really wanted a continuation of the festivities after school, so when they got home I had some wizarding hats ready. I coated the sugar cones in melted chocolate chips, dipped the bottom in cookies & cream sprinkles and placed them on top of donuts. Nothing healthy about this after-school snack, but oh well!

For drinks, I put different colors of food coloring in the bottom of cups and then poured in Sprite. They loved finding out what color they got.

I'd say from their faces, the day was a hit! Ella is already planning for next year. Good thing I've got 363 days until then.  

I have been looking forward to the 2, 4, 6, 8 combination of their ages for a while now. It's just fun to say, you know all cheerleader like with ten twinkles. 🙂 Ok, not really.

It only lasted for a short month and now we're up by one. Dallin has been asking me forever what we would be doing for his birthday. My usual reply was that we'd talk about it when it got closer. And then closer was on my doorstep. It seems that's just how life is though. Pretty soon a mission and college will be on my doorstep and I'll be left wondering what happened to those 2, 4, 6, 8 days.

This year was his turn for an official party. He hasn't had one since he was three (way back when Ella had no hair) so I broke down and figured it might be time to actually plan something since Ella has more hair now and all.

He's still a Lego fanatic so little yellow faced men were in abundance. We have a year's supply (or maybe 10) of Legos. How the 9 year old loves that! And I guess you could say the 2 year old loves it too. Since he was at Urgent Care last night with a Lego stuck up his nose. Sigh.

 Oh 2, 4, 6, 9…I love these sweet kids of mine! 

every one-year-old celebration must involve the cake dive.

this little guy didn't waste any time getting down to the nitty gritty!